Sally Bein and his children: The Israelite Educational Institution in Beelitz

Panel discussion and film screening (with translation into German Sign Language, DGS)

In October 1908, the Israelite Educational Institution for Mentally Retarded Children opened in Beelitz, Brandenburg. The institution, initiated by the Jewish Community Association in Berlin and the Bnai Brith Lodge, offered children with disabilities aged six to fourteen a ten-grade education.

Sally Bein, born in 1881 in Inowraclaw in the province of Posen, was the director of the home. Although the trained primary school and deaf-mute teacher had the opportunity to leave Germany in the late 1930s, he decided to stay with the children in Beelitz. In June 1942, he was deported to Sobibor with his wife, his younger daughter and the remaining children and teachers at the institution and murdered.

The only known photographic evidence of the Israelite Educational Institution to date is a photo album of the teacher Arthur Feiner, who worked there from 1930 to 1933 and managed to escape to Shanghai in 1940.

This album was recently donated to the Jewish Museum Berlin. On this occasion, Aubrey Pomerance, director of the JMB archive, invites you to a discussion about Sally Bein, Arthur Feiner, the Israelite Educational Institution and Jewish curative education in Germany. Afterwards, the film The Children of Sally Bein (director: Dan Wolman) will be shown.

Panel guests:

Dagmar Drovs, founder of the album, author on curative education in German Jewry

Ronny Dotan and Tatjana Ruge, researchers and authors on the history of the Israelite Educational Institution

Sieglind Ellger-Rüttgart, Prof. em. for general rehabilitation pedagogy

Dan Wolman, director of The Children of Sally Bein

The event will be translated into German Sign Language (DGS).

With the kind support of Berliner Sparkasse.Translated with DeepL

Meeting point: W. M. Blumenthal Academy, Klaus Mangold Auditorium Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin (Opposite the Museum)

Next date:

• Date Tuesday, 28/April/2026 19:00 bis 20:30
• Venue Jüdisches Museum Berlin
• Address Lindenstraße 14, 10969 Berlin-Kreuzberg